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k j j k 1 Eyewitness identification errors Convicted burglar Jerome Thomas Clepper had tried to go straight. But his rural Pine City body shop was failing. He needed cash, one way or another. His solution pulled Shaun Deckinga into a nightmare. On December 15, 1992, at the Forest Lake State Bank, Clepper opened a brown accordion folder wide enough for the teller to see that it contained a black semiautomatic pistol. After she stuffed $13,370 into the folder, he walked casually from the bank and vanished. One month later, using the same method, Clepper robbed Norwest Bank in Two Harbors of $2,395. "I want to make a withdrawal," he told the teller as he showed her the gun. He struck again two weeks later, on Jan. 29, this time at the Lakeside branch of St. Louis Bank for Savings, in Duluth, where he got $3,545. That night, Duluth TV stations ran blurry bank pictures from the robberies. At 10:20 p.m., as news turned to weather, someone called the Duluth Police Department anonymously and told the desk sergeant that the robber on the news looked like Shaun Deckinga. In that moment, Deckinga went from being an obscure Duluth carpenter to a suspect in major federal crimes. His resemblance to Jerome Clepper may have put Shaun Deckinga in the sights of the FBI, but cruel coincidents put him behind bars. Men who recently worked with Deckinga told agents they'd seen him in a black leather jacket, dark knit hat and gold-rimmed sunglasses like the robber's. One man said Deckinga mentioned buying a handgun. On Feb. 4, investigators questioned Deckinga and his girlfriend, Jill Puglisi, in their home in West Duluth. Both he and Puglisi said they were home together, with Shaun nursing a cold, at the time of the Lakeside robbery, and they couldn't remember where they were during the other robberies. A police officer said that during the interviews he saw a black leather jacket on a hook and a dark knit hat on the floor. Investigators noted that Deckinga had a discolored front tooth, a characteristic that one teller said the robber had. They left, but continued to investigate. Tellers in Two Harbors and Duluth picked Deckinga's photo out of a lineup. Acquaintances and even a homeowner who'd hired Deckinga to work on her house said the man in the bank photos appeared to be him. A Duluth man told the FBI he'd shopped for snowmobile parts with Deckinga the afternoon of Jan. 29, contradicting the alibi that he had stayed home sick. Several people told detectives that Deckinga was a bad businessman who sometimes shortchanged people, and records showed he 3 4 Introduction Eyewitness identification errors Claire in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. Again he used a folder, and again he covered his left arm. Authorities sent a photo of the [St. Croix Falls] robber to nearby law enforcement agencies. On June 23, jailers Brent Jahnz and Rick Boland saw the photo where they work in the Pine County Jail, and both said the same thing: "I should know this guy." After a minute, one of them said it: Jerry Clepper, a former inmate, owner of a local body shop. On June 29, the FBI and local authorities searched Clepper's mobile home, shop, and cars. Among other things they seized a black leather jacket, black pellet gun made to look like a semiautomatic pistol, brown accordion file folder and red jacket, all of which fit the cases. Clepper arrived home during the search and was arrested. He admitting robbing banks in Forest lake, Two Harbors, Duluth, Grantsburg, and St. Croix Falls. He identified himself in bank pictures and described his method. He revealed that for one of the robberies he'd placed aluminum foil over one of his front teeth to make it stand out. He said he tried to save his business with some of the money, and gambled away the rest. FBI agent Harvey, along with assistant U.S. attorneys Dunne and Magill, quickly attended to their next move: getting Shaun Deckinga out of jail. The sun shone brightly on July 1 as Deckinga walked lightly down the front courthouse steps a free man. 5 had filed for bankruptcy that year. And he'd worked at construction jobs near two of the banks before each was robbed. On Feb. 17, U. Magistrate Raymond L. Erickson ordered Deckinga detained without bail pending trial. Among other things, he cited Deckinga's alleged use of a firearm and his apparent disdain for the legal system; he'd registered vehicles in Wisconsin illegally and used a fake address to get a Wisconsin driver's license after his Minnesota license was suspended for traffic violations. Other than that, he had no criminal record. For the next five months, Deckinga's home would be the St. Louis County jail. On May 18, 1993, a bank in Grantsburg, Wisconsin a town about 30 minutes from Pine City, Minnesota, was robbed. David Malban, Deckinga's attorney, was shown an unusually clear photo of the bank robber produced by the bank officers together with a brown accordian file in which the robber carried his gun. The bearded robber looked like Deckinga, and he looked like the robber in the photos from all the other banks. But this one could not be Deckinga, and suddenly, finally, Malban knew that the others weren't either. They were all one man, this man. In the trial before Judge Paul A. Magnuson, three tellers from Two Harbors and Duluth identified Deckinga, one remembering the set of his eyes, another a front tooth that stood out somehow. They all said they were either positive or sure. Jurors told the Star Tribune they convicted Deckinga because the tellers seemed so sure. But what jurors didn't know hurt Deckinga badly. Magnuson denied the defense's request to call University of Minnesota Law School Prof. Steven Penrod, who has devoted his career to studying the reliability of eyewitness identifications. . . Penrod, who has conducted 15 studies on the subject and has testified in 100 cases nationwide, said he would have told the jury that an eyewitness "could be 100 percent confident and still be 100 percent wrong." Factors that inhibit accuracy include stress, the presence of a weapon, and especially whether the subject was wearing a hat. "A hat proves to be a very effective disguise," said Penrod. "It covers one of the critical cues in differentiating faces the hairline." But Magnuson, relying on higher court precedent, ruled that Penrod's testimony would have invaded the "province of the jury." The Deckinga jury thus had no reason to question the eyewitness accounts. Said juror Diana Freese of Kent, Minnesota: "He was identified; that's what made the biggest impression on most of us. The tellers said he did it." The loss of Penrod's testimony was a blow, but Malban reassured himself that Grantsburg would blow the case wide open. The Duluth News-Tribune likened the testimony on Grantsburg to a scene out of Perry Mason. Suddenly, it seemed possible that the government had made a serious mistake. Despite Malban's optimism, Deckinga was convicted on two of the three robberies. On June 17, Clepper struck again, this time robbing the First Federal Bank of Eau The case of Shaun Deckinga was reported in the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Oakes, October 17, 1993, p. 1). Lest you think that mistaken eyewitness identification is a freakish phenomenon consider the story of Elmer P. Jacobs. During August the Los Angeles police received a series of reports from taxi drivers who had been the victims of robberies by two male passengers. On August 16 E.A. Stocks reported his cab and $7.00 had been stolen. On August 17, Newt Troelson reported a similar crime, with the loss of $12.00. On the 18th, E. M. Shaw, and on the 20th, E. I. McDonald, reported similar experiences. Each time the taxi driver was asked to drive to a remote location where he was robbed. Similar crimes were being reported elsewhere in the Los Angeles vicinity. Early in September the four victims attended police department lineups where groups of arrested persons were marched before victims of many types of crimes for possible identification. All four of the taxi drivers identified a prisoner, Elmer P. Jacobs, as one of the robbers. Jacobs had been arrested for stealing an automobile for a joy ride on August 18, 1928. He eventually pleaded guilty to grand larceny for the car theft and was sentenced to Folsom prison due to his record as a second offender. In the meantime, he was indicted for the four taxi robberies and was tried on October 30 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Each victim appeared, described the holdup, and identified Jacobs as one of the robbers. Jacobs had wavy hair, almond-shaped eyes, a crooked nose, and tight, thin lips (as viewed from the side). He was easily recognized. Jacobs offered some imprecise alibi 6 Introduction Eyewitness identification errors 7 evidence intended to show that he was elsewhere at the time each crime occurred, but the jury returned a guilty verdict for each of the robberies. On November 5, Jacobs was sentenced to serve from fifteen years to life on each count. During the week Jacobs was sentenced, Harvey Hossafrasse, Fredell Nicholson, John Shelby Hobbs, and William Schmittroth were arrested on an assortment of charges. Hossafrasse and Nicholson soon confessed to robbing Newt Troelson and the confessions were corroborated with fingerprints. Further confessions linked these two with the Stocks and Shaw robberies, and implicated Hobbs and Schmittroth in the McDonald robbery. None of these gang members knew Jacobs. The four men were placed in lineups for the victims to view. All the confessed robbers were positively identified and it was clear to the victims that their identifications of Jacobs were in error. These events all took place in 1928 and the Jacobs story became one of many reported by Edwin M. Borchard, former Professor of Law at Yale University, in Convicting the Innocent (1932, pp. 340 341), a collection of cases in which people were erroneously convicted. The accuracy of eyewitness identification One of the fundamental concerns that motivates psychologists' interest in the factors that affect eyewitness reliability is a recognition that eyewitness identification evidence is frequently the source of erroneous convictions. How often does eyewitness evidence result in erroneous convictions? The compelling instances of mistaken identification described in the beginning of this chapter illustrate the problem but they do not speak to the overall accuracy rate of eyewitness identification. Huff (1987) notes that there is no known method for authoritatively determining how many erroneous convictions occur each year, but the estimates in the literature range from only a few cases per year to as many as 20% of all convictions. There are several possible methods one might employ to make such estimates. For example, one can survey criminal justice officials and secure their estimates of false conviction rates. One can even use these officials and other sources to identify cases of erroneous conviction. Huff (1987) used both tactics: He conducted a national survey of state attorneys general (N = 54) and in-depth surveys of criminal justice officials from Ohio (including judges, public defenders, and prosecutors). The overall response rate was 65% (N = 229). Over 70% of these respondents believed that erroneous convictions comprise less than 1% of all felony convictions, and another 20 percent of the estimates fell into the 1 5% range. In addition to this survey, Huff undertook a search of major newspapers and 1,100 magazines and journals. These methods produced a total of 500 known cases of erroneous conviction. Even if one assumes, as did Huff, that the error rate is only .5%, the number of erroneous convictions could be staggering: In 1991 there were an estimated 14.1 million arrests in the United States (including drunken driving, but not other traffic offenses). Nearly 3 million of these arrests were for serious FBI "index crimes" such as murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and larceny. Department of Justice data (1983) suggest that over half of these index crime arrests result in convictions. The 50% conviction rate appears reasonable: In 1990 there were nearly 830,000 felony convictions in the state courts and this does not include misdemeanor convictions that followed from arrests for more serious offenses. In addition, in 1992 there were over 42,000 convictions in federal courts (BJS, 1992). These numbers indicate that there could easily have been 1.5 million convictions per year for serious offenses in recent years and if only .5% are erroneous, that yields 7,500 erroneous convictions per year for serious offenses! As Huff noted based on similar computations: "This level of accuracy is at once both reassuring and frightening reassuring in the aggregate, but frightening to contemplate individual cases of injustice, even if they constitute a very small proportion of all convictions" (p. 103). Eyewitnesses in the criminal justice system The criminal justice system recognizes that eyewitness testimony in general and eyewitness identification in particular play profoundly important roles in the apprehension, prosecution, and adjudication of criminal offenders. Police investigators rely heavily on eyewitness testimony in their initial investigation of a crime (Fisher & Geiselman, 1992). Eyewitness identifications from photospreads and lineups are frequent occurrences (Brigham & Bothwell, 1983; Goldstein, Chance, & Schneller, 1991). And the eyewitness is probably the single most common form of witness in many criminal trials. The criminal justice system also acknowledges the influence that eyewitnesses have on trial outcomes. Prosecutors typically do not debate whether or not to put the eyewitness on the stand; they do so reflexively. Defense attorneys do not equivocate when establishing strategies for cross-examining eyewitnesses; they make every attempt to discredit eyewitnesses. The criminal justice system also recognizes the fallibility of eyewitness identification. Cases of mistaken identification are amply documented in the legal and popular literature, as are the cases already described. Eyewitnesses may be mistaken for a variety of reasons: because they have weak memories for the event or because they have been deliberately or accidentally subjected to investigation procedures that compromise the quality of eyewitness identification or some degree of both. 8 Introduction Eyewitness identification errors 9 Sources of conviction errors What produces these erroneous convictions? Several legal scholars, beginning with Borchard (1932), have studied the causes of erroneous conviction in over 1,000 criminal cases (see also Brandon & Davies, 1973; Frank & Frank, 1957; Huff, 1987; Huff, Rattner, & Sagarin, 1986). Huff (1987) readily concludes, on the basis of the 500 cases of erroneous conviction that he identified, that the single leading cause of mistaken conviction was erroneous eyewitness identification of the defendants. He states that eyewitness error was involved in nearly 60% of the cases he studied. This rate is all the more remarkable given that eyewitness cases probably constitute a small proportion of all cases: Loh (1981) estimates that eyewitness identifications are a prominent feature in only 5% of trials (Loh, 1981) and a survey of prosecutors in 30 states produced an estimate that 3% of felony cases are based on eyewitness identifications (Goldstein, Chance, & Schneller, 1989). Such archival data are indeed compelling evidence that mistaken eyewitness identifications occur. Based on the estimate of 7,500 cases of erroneous conviction just mentioned, the archival data suggest there may be as many as 4,500 erroneous convictions each year arising from mistaken identifications. If these erroneous convictions follow the pattern of other cases, in 85 90% of them the defendant has pleaded guilty in exchange for a lightened, plea-bargained sentence. Of course it is also entirely plausible that truly innocent defendants such as Elmer Jacobs and Shaun Deckinga, when confronted by mistaken identifications, are less likely to plea bargain and more likely to proceed to trial in an effort to reveal the error. Thus, a disproportionate number of erroneous convictions may arise from trials before juries and judges. The cases reviewed by Borchard, Huff, and the others are unique in that there was some basis for confidently concluding that the identifications were mistaken. However, there is no way to know how representative those cases are of all cases of erroneous conviction it may, for instance, be easier or more difficult to establish innocence in an eyewitness case than in cases of erroneous conviction that arise from other sources such as unethical prosecutorial behavior, false accusations, or false confessions. As a result of these problems it is hazardous to use the computations above to estimate the likelihood that the average identification is mistaken. Error rates in eyewitness identifications Experimental studies of eyewitness identification performance provide another source of information on the plausible rates of mistaken identifications. In experiments, crimes are simulated in various ways. In some experiments (e.g., Cutler, Penrod, & Martens, 1987a) subjects view videotaped enactments of crimes and later attempt to identify the perpetrators. In others (e.g., Cutler & Fisher, 1990), innocuous thefts are staged in classrooms in view of a large number of students. In still others (e.g., Lindsay, Wells, & Rumpel, 1981), thefts are staged for individual subjects who visit the laboratory believing they are there to participate in an unrelated experiment. In a more realistic but unusual laboratory experiment conducted by Hosch and Cooper (1982), the experimenters staged a theft of subjects' watches, leading them to believe they were victims of an actual crime. Many of these experiments test the accuracy of identification performance by having some eyewitnesses attempt identifications from lineups (or photoarrays) in which the perpetrator is present and others attempt identifications from lineups in which the perpetrator is absent. The purpose of using perpetrator-present lineups is to assess eyewitnesses' abilities to identify crime perpetrators correctly. The purpose of using perpetrator-absent lineups is to assess the extent to which eyewitnesses falsely identify lineup members as crime perpetrators. In other words, the perpetrator-present lineups resemble the situation in which the suspect is guilty, and the perpetrator-absent lineups resemble the situation in which the suspect is innocent. Wells (1993) notes that across the many laboratory experiments on eyewitness identification, false the identification rates varied from nearly 0% to nearly 100%. Moreover, Wells notes that, in many of these studies, false identifications are made with expressions of high levels of certainty. Although the laboratory evidence clearly demonstrates that false identifications can occur with some regularity and that many eyewitnesses are capable of persuading themselves that their false identifications are correct, this evidence falls short of addressing the question of how accurate are identifications in actual cases. The problem with generalizing the accuracy rates from these experiments is that the crime simulations can depart in many ways from actual crimes. Hence, even if we were to average the rates across experiments and find that false identification rates occur, say, 40% of the time, we would have to be cautious in generalizing this rate to actual crimes involving eyewitness identification. Indeed, estimating the identification accuracy rates in actual crimes is not the purpose of most eyewitness identification experiments. The purpose of most experiments is to isolate some factor, such as viewing conditions or the manner in which a lineup test is conducted, and examine its influence while holding all other factors constant. Thus, the investigator is primarily interested in the accuracy rates in one experimental condition (e.g., when eyewitnesses receive one set of instructions prior to a lineup test) as 10 Introduction Eyewitness identification errors 11 compared to accuracy rates in an alternative experimental condition (e.g., when eyewitnesses receive another set of instructions prior to the lineup test). In attempting to test the effect of a factor on eyewitness identification accuracy, the investigator typically devises a methodology that will yield an average accuracy rate of about 50%. By doing so, the investigator maximizes the sensitivity of the experimental test so that the effect of some potentially important factor, such as lineup instructions, can be detected. This point can be illustrated with an example. Imagine attempting to test the influence of suggestive lineup instructions on identification accuracy in a situation in which 100% of eyewitness are likely to make an accurate identification, such as if they are asked to identify a family member they saw engaging in a crime. All of the eyewitnesses would be expected to correctly identify their brothers and not falsely identify innocent suspects as their brothers, regardless of how suggestive the lineup instructions were. Thus, suggestive instructions would appear to have no effect on identification accuracy. The lack of an effect would probably be due to insensitivity of the test situation rather than to a resistance to suggestion on the part of all eyewitnesses. Identification tests and the data they produce are more sensitive to the effects of experimental factors if they are equally distributed over the possible range of performance accuracy. The fact that most investigators deliberately aim for identification accuracy rates of around 50% in their experiments is powerful reason to question the generalizability of the accuracy rates in experiments to those in actual cases. Of course, the fact that these levels of error can readily be attained in experiments tells us something about the general unreliability of eyewitness identifications. Field experiments with eyewitnesses With these caveats in mind, perhaps the most relevant source of data pertaining to accuracy rates of actual eyewitness identifications emerges from field studies of eyewitness identification. Some researchers (Brigham, Maass, Snyder, & Spaulding, 1982; Krafka & Penrod, 1985; Pigott, Brigham, & Bothwell, 1990; Platz & Hosch, 1988) have attempted to reap the benefits of both laboratory experiments and realistic crime conditions by conducting well-controlled experiments in more realistic field settings. The primary purpose of this research is, like laboratory experiments, to estimate the effects of an isolated factor on identification accuracy. Two of the experiments (Brigham et al., 1982; Platz & Hosch, 1988) were primarily interested in the influences of witness and perpetrator race on identification accuracy. One (Krafka & Penrod, 1985) was primarily concerned with the influence of procedures designed to improve the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. Pigott et al.'s (1990) study examined the relation between accuracy of eyewitnesses' descriptions and identifications. Because these studies were conducted in more realistic settings, their identification accuracy rates might be a better indication of those that are likely in actual crimes, at least as compared to archival studies and laboratory experiments. Brigham et al. (1982) conducted the first of these experiments. Their procedure required two casually dressed males independently to enter a Tallahassee, Florida, convenience store, 5 minutes apart. Each engaged in an unusual (but safe) transaction with the convenience store clerk. One "customer" paid for a pack of cigarettes entirely with pennies, and either the customer or clerk had to count them (70 to 90 cents). That customer then asked for directions to a local airport, bus station, hospital, or shopping mall. The other customer carried a product to the counter as if he were going to purchase it, discovered that he did not have enough money, started for the door, found enough change, and returned to the counter to purchase the item. He then asked directions to one of the aforementioned locations. Each transaction lasted 3 to 4 minutes. Clerks were later asked to identify the customers from photoarrays. In their pilot work for this experiment, Brigham et al. tested the clerks 24 hours later and found that only 7.8% were able to identify the customers correctly. This accuracy rate was comparable to what one would observe just from guessing. They then modified the procedure to test for identification accuracy after only 2 hours. In all, 73 clerks participated as eyewitnesses, each providing two identifications, one of each customer. With the 2-hour time delay, 50 out of 146 total identifications (34.2%) were correct. Customer-absent photoarrays were not used in this experiment, so false identification rates could not be estimated. In Krafka and Penrod's (1985) experiment, a "customer" entered convenience stores in Madison, Wisconsin, and purchased a small item with a traveler's check. Either 2 or 24 hours later, a researcher, posing as a law intern, asked the clerks to identify the customer. Eighty-five clerks were shown either customer-present or customer-absent photoarrays. When the customer was present in the photoarray, 41% of the clerks correctly identified him. When the customer was absent from the photoarray, 34% falsely identified a photograph as that of the customer. Platz and Hosch (1988) used the same convenience store scenario as did Brigham et al. (1982) except that three accomplices entered the store rather than two. The convenience stores were in El Paso, Texas. The first two accomplices engaged in the same routines carried out in Brigham et al.'s experiment. The third attempted to pay for a purchase with a combination of dollars and pesos. Upon being informed that the store did not accept pesos, the customer asked the clerk if the store carried a particular sports magazine. Identifications were tested using customer-present photoarrays 12 Introduction Eyewitness identification errors 13 2 hours after the customers entered the stores. Each of 86 clerks attempted to identify all three customers. In all, 44.2% of the identifications were correct. The false identification rate could not be assessed as customerabsent photoarrays were not used. Apparently having exhausted all of the convenience stores in Tallahassee, Florida, Brigham and colleagues (Pigott et al., 1990) turned to local banks for their next field study. In each scenario, one of two accomplices entered the bank through its main entrance, walked to the center island, and pretended to fill out a deposit slip. The accomplice then approached a teller and attempted to cash a check. The check was a "crudely altered United States Postal Service money order" in which the amount of $10 was altered to $110. All tellers refused to cash the money order. Each time the accomplice argued with the teller, claiming that the alteration was made by post office personnel. After repeated refusals from the clerk, the accomplice became irate, took the money order, and hurried out of the bank. The interaction lasted approximately 90 seconds. Four to five hours later an experimenter, posing as a law officer, showed the teller a customer-present or customer-absent photoarray. In all, 47 bank tellers participated as eyewitnesses. Among tellers shown a customer-present photoarray, 47.8% made a correct identification. Among tellers shown a customer-absent photoarray, 37.5% made a false identification. In summary, data were gathered in these experiments from 291 mockeyewitnesses who were administered 536 separate identification tests. The correct and false identification rates in these experiments are summarized in Table 1.1. The average percentage correct is 41.8% for correct identifications and 35.8% for false identifications. What we learn from these experiments is that identifications for persons seen briefly, in nonstressful conditions, and attempted after brief delays, are frequently inaccurate. In customer-present photoarrays that resemble the situation in which the suspect is guilty, only two out of five guilty persons were correctly identified. In customer-absent photoarrays that represent the situation in which the suspect is innocent, one out of three innocent persons was falsely identified. In one of these studies (Pigott et al., 1990), the mock-eyewitnesses were bank tellers, 77% of whom reported that they had received training for eyewitness situations. Although the scenarios used in these four studies do not resemble the events in many crimes such as armed robbery or murder, the results are still relevant. More important, the scenarios do resemble many eyewitness situations. Eyewitnesses do not always experience violent and heinous crimes. Sometimes eyewitnesses are asked to identify persons whom they did not know were perpetrators at the time an interaction occurred. At other times eyewitnesses are asked to identify persons whom they viewed fleeing a scene. Table 1.1. Identification accuracy rates in field experiments Sample study size Percentage correct identifications Percentage false identifications Brigham et al. (1992) Krafka & Penrod (1985) Platz & Hosch (1988) Pigott et al. (1990) Total/Unweighted Average 146 85 258 47 536 34.2 41. 0 44.2 47.8 41.8 37.5 35.8 34. 0 In comparing the methodologies used in these studies with what does happen in violent crimes, some potentially important differences can be identified. The time during which the to-be-recognized person was available for viewing was substantial and comparable to many crimes. The time between the crime and identification was relatively brief and we know that longer retention intervals generally lead to less accurate identifications (see Chapter 5 below). The largest deficiency in the field research is that the scenarios employed do not simulate the emotional duress experienced by an eyewitness to a violent crime. The effects of emotional duress on eyewitness memory in general, and identification accuracy in particular, are less clear (Christiaanson, 1992). Thus, the factors that distinguish the field studies from real-life violent crimes lead us to believe that if there is any bias, the field studies overestimate the accuracy of eyewitness identifications. The data from laboratory experiments and field studies complement the archival studies, which demonstrate compellingly that mistaken identification have, on numerous occasions, led to miscarriages of justice. The laboratory experiments clearly demonstrate that combinations of factors can produce eyewitness identification accuracy rates that span the full range of possibilities: from nearly 0% accuracy to nearly 100% accuracy. And field studies demonstrate that, in some realistic crimelike situations, eyewitness identifications are often inaccurate. But what accounts for these inaccuracies? Are human beings simply poor at recognizing other people? As social animals, such a state of affairs would serve us poorly. Do we frequently mistakenly identify persons such as our family members, friends, and fellow employees? Hardly. Many 14 Introduction Eyewitness identification errors 15 psychologists have argued that certain factors predictably influence identification accuracy at the perception, encoding, storage, and retrieval stages of memory. This research is summarized in the following chapters. The response of the criminal justice system to identification errors In an effort to reconcile the conflict produced by the powerful need for eyewitness testimony and the dangers of mistaken identification, the criminal justice system has designed safeguards that, in theory, protect the defendant from erroneous conviction due to mistaken identification. The courts have established pretrial criteria designed to encourage the use of fair identification procedures. During trial the most common safeguards are cross-examination of witnesses and judicial instructions delivered to the jury at the conclusion of the trial. These instructions advise the jury on how to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses they have heard testify. Sometimes these instructions are supplemented with special instructions concerning the evaluation of eyewitnesses who have made an identification of the defendant. A less common safeguard is the use of expert testimony on the psychology of eyewitness memory, as was attempted in the Deckinga case. Psychologists have been studying memory for over 100 years. The foci of these investigations include theoretical and applied aspects of memory processes. Examples of theoretical questions include: How is memory organized? How do we update memory? Do we have different types of memory systems for different types of information? How does aging influence memory processes? Examples of applied questions include: Which mnemonic techniques are most effective for memorizing information for later retrieval from memory? How can we improve memory for critical events? If aging has a detrimental effect on memory, how can we counteract it? Why has the criminal justice system become interested in what psychologists have to say about eyewitness memory? Traditionally the criminal justice system has been receptive to new technologies. The role of forensic science has grown exponentially over the past century. Anyone who has observed a contemporary crime scene investigation can attest to its rigor. Within the shortest possible time of notification (usually within 1 hour), the police can dispatch a mobile laboratory to the crime scene. While a nosy public is kept behind the familiar yellow tape, a large group of dispassionate forensic experts engage in a well-planned routine of evidence gathering with the use of scientifically sophisticated equipment. Evidence of all shapes and sizes (including barely visible particles) is kept sterile for less rushed and more thorough analyses. These forensic investigations provide not only clues for detectives but their results are frequently used in court to buttress one or the other side's theories. Judges and juries have heard expert testimony about scientific analyses of hair, soil, fibers, and various kinds of body fluids. They have heard the testimony of pathologists who describe the manner and time of death. And increasingly they are hearing about DNA matching a process that has the potential to revolutionize criminal justice proceedings. Inviting (or tolerating) the testimony of psychologists who are experts in human memory processes is merely an extension of the criminal justice system's invitation to forensic science. Psychologists have learned a great deal about memory in general and eyewitness memory in particular. Why not use the information learned from their investigations to improve the quality of judges' or juries' appraisals of eyewitness identification? If the information is accurate and relevant to a specific case, wouldn't it help the judge and jury more accurately to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses? Wouldn't the defendant be better protected from the legal consequences of mistaken identification? Some courts have admitted expert psychological testimony on eyewitness memory and do so with some regularity. These courts, however, are a minority. At this point in time, admission of expert psychological testimony on eyewitness memory is the exception rather than the rule. Nonetheless, the courts have grown dramatically more receptive to eyewitness expert testimony in recent years. In the next two chapters we examine the state of the law with respect to expert witness testimony concerning eyewitness identification issues. The following four chapters concern the scientific psychology of eyewitness identification. Chapter 4 considers what it means for research to be scientific and Chapter 5 considers the problems one encounters when trying to provide a summary of scientific research findings. Chapters 6 and 7 review the scientific literature on the accuracy of eyewitness identification and the various factors that affect accuracy. Also reviewed in Chapters 6 and 7 are the factors that are sometimes believed to affect, but show little relation to, identification accuracy. Chapter 8 examines the roles of specific factors affecting the suggestiveness of eyewitness identification tests. The next two chapters review the effectiveness of traditional safeguards believed to protect the defendant from the consequences of mistaken eyewitness identification: Chapter 9 considers the problems attorneys have in developing information that would be useful for cross-examination of eyewitnesses and Chapter 10 reviews research on the effectiveness of crossexamination. Chapter 11 reviews research surveying laypersons about their knowledge of the factors that contribute to eyewitness unreliability and Chapters 12 and 13 examine research on juror decision making in eyewitness cases. Chapters 14, 15, and 16 focus on research studying the impact of 16 Introduction j k expert psychological testimony in eyewitness cases. Chapter 17 summarizes research on the effects of instructions to juries as a safeguard against mistaken convictions. Part II Eyewitnesses, expert psychologists, and the law
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Path: Kansas State >> GEOG >> 331 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> GEOG >> 331 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> GEOG >> 331 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> GEOG >> 331 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> GEOG >> 331 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ARAB >> 182 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 428 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 518 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ARAB >> 182 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 428 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 518 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ARAB >> 182 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 428 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 518 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ARAB >> 182 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 428 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 518 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ARAB >> 182 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 428 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 518 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ARAB >> 182 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 428 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> MUSIC >> 518 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ART >> 440 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ART >> 445 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> PHIL >> 230 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> PHIL >> 525 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> PHIL >> 650 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ENGL >> 445 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ENGL >> 525 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ENGL >> 650 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ENGL >> 660 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ENGL >> 663 Spring, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ART >> 440 Fall, 2008
Path: Kansas State >> ART >> 445 Spring, 2008